[Emperor Smeat]

According to Bruce Prichard, WWE's stale habit of almost always starting a show with a promo segment can be traced back to Vince Russo who loved doing it during the Attitude Era and that mentality stuck with the company since then.

Originally Posted by Fightful Discussing this while reviewing the May 11, 1999 episode of Monday Night Raw on podcast, Bruce Prichard reveals that this is a philosophy preferred by Vince Russo, the head writer of WWE at this time, but will occasionally be altered for a week at the suggestion of either himself, Pat Patterson, or another wrestling traditionalist. "[Russo] liked starting off the show with the in-ring segments and felt that that set the tone for the rest of the evening. Get everything out. Let people know what they're going to see for the next two hours," Bruce began. "A lot of times that change up would come from, for example, me or Pat Patterson or more of a traditionalist as it's sometimes you sit there with a stopwatch and go, 'Okay. We had forty-two minutes to talk and we only had so many minutes of wrestling.'" Bruce would also say that at the time, this style fit the product and that the belief was as long as the dialogue was good, the more talking that was seen from top stars, the better the show would be received. He continued, "I think that the audience, and it's been proven time and time again, that if it's good talk and it's entertaining, then they like it. I know I used to watch wrestling just for the interviews. I would watch the matches, obviously, but I was waiting for those interviews. I wanted to hear my guy talk. And that was the philosophy during this time. The more talk you had, a lot of times the feeling was the better the show was."